Matthew P. Bachand
Plan One: Teaching the Cultural Studies Framework
Objective:
To analyze a cultural myth that students recognize in order to define daily practices and beliefs.
Exploration
:
Ask students to think about a belief that is widely held by small children in our culture that they have now grown out of: Santa Claus. Give students time to think of everything they can remember about Santa.
Operation
:
We will discover how our culture influences our beliefs by diagnosing the sources of our beliefs about Santa Claus and identifying the ways in which our culture explains away our doubts about him.
Define
daily practices
and ask students to provide examples of daily practices that support the idea that Santa is real. Daily practices may include seeing Santa at the mall, writing him letters, watching movies about him, staying on his "nice" list and off of his "naughty" list, singing songs that celebrate him, and the like.
Have students think about the rules that govern Santa: You cannot see him while he is in, or he'll leave without giving you presents. He will leave you coal if you are bad. You must leave him cookies.
Ask students what these practices and beliefs tell us about children: that is, what unquestioned beliefsmythsdo we hold about children? Good kids should be rewarded, bad kids should be punished, children are being watched and must do as they are told, etc.
Independent
Practice
:
Have students choose another mythical character, such as the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny and repeat the process. Continue this until they can identify enough practices and beliefs, and have an idea what a cultural myth that provides a foundation for those beliefs and practices is.
Assessment
:
Can students articulate core values, practices, and myths about their fictional entity?
Plan Two: Analyzing Setting in Princess Mononoke
Objective:
To provide a critique of the role setting plays in influencing character behavior by comparing and contrasting the practices and beliefs of characters from rural and urban settings regarding the land.
Exploration
:
Students will be split into small groups of four or five students each. Half of the groups will share ideas about the practices and beliefs of San and Ashitaka towards the forests, while the other half will share ideas about the practices and beliefs of Lady Eboshi and the mining town inhabitants.
Operation
:
The groups will articulate reasons
why
the members of their group might believe as they do. For example, San, raised by the Wolf Gods, would believe that nature is more important than human civilization. Ashitaka, who has befriended his elk mount, would believe that there is a shared relationship, because he works as his elk mount's partner through much of the film.
Assessment
:
Do the students offer plausible, supported theories for why the characters have different perspectives at the same time (the heart of cultural analysis)?
Plan Three: Director's Commentary for
Kwaidan
Objective
:
To explain how directors manipulate the means of telling a story in order to achieve a desired effect by writing our own director's commentary for a short film.
Exploration
:
First, the students will be asked the question: how does Kobayashi use filmmaking techniques to enhance his telling of one of the stories in
Kwaidan?
After students offer some initial theories, follow up by asking the students what techniques did he have at his disposal?
Operation
:
Students will be put into groups of four or five. They will then review the materials from the Yale Film Study Center at http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/ in order to refresh their memory about all the different elements of making a film.
As a model, students should watch Donald Richie's commentary for
Rashomon.
While it will be unnecessary to watch the commentary for the entire film, the initial scenes of the Rashomon gate and at least one of the characters' testimony before the judge should be viewed so that students can create a list of possible comments to include. Students should then be able to generate a checklist of elements to include in a thorough discussion of the filmmaker's techniques: lighting, mise-en-scene, editing, and so on. These lists should be discussed in a whole-class setting in order to set the standards for the student projects.
Application
:
Students should be given time to watch the appropriate sections of their film and to create their commentary. Because this could take some time, I suggest having this group project take place at the same time as an individual writer's workshop about some related topic, so that all groups are thoughtfully engaged while not watching film per se.
The students should then create their commentaries in small groups, using both their notes from the film analysis website and their checklists generated from watching the commentary on
Rashomon
. Each member of the group should contribute to the oral recitation of the commentary, which they should give to the class while watching the film on mute.
Assessment
:
Both students and teacher should assess the group's "director's commentary" by completing the checklist both during and after the presentation. Other group presentation criteria should also be established by the class, as well as group work criteria.